


"I would not be you for a kingdom"

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Villette - Charlotte Brontë
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-20
Updated: 2006-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:54:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1627823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Lucy Snowe appeared to Ginevra Fanshawe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"I would not be you for a kingdom"

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Claire

 

 

"Are you fond of a sea voyage?" I asked her.

She was small and slight and pale, a gentlewoman a few years older than myself, in plain mourning clothes. My father had pointed her out to me as suitable company on the journey from London to Dieppe. She did not look interesting -- she was not pretty, and her clothes were shabby -- but she was at least not one of the vulgar steerage passengers.

She looked at me carefully, and said, in a small but distinct voice, "I do not know whether I am _fond_ of a sea voyage: I have never travelled by sea before."

It can do no harm now, I think, to speak of something so long ago. I liked her. I began to rattle on about the charm of first impressions, since I had made so many voyages -- I had been across the Channel to one school or another half a dozen times since I was ten years old. I stopped when I saw her smile -- a brief, sarcastic grimace, not the fond look I expected. It will be as well to say that, though I am now eighty years old, when I was eighteen I had men at my feet, dying for one glance from my eye. I was so lovely that even other women were fond of me. I was accustomed to indulgence and admiration. I tell you, my dear, that look of amusement from Lucy Snowe piqued me.

"Why do you laugh at me?" I demanded.

"Because you are so young to be _blasée_ about anything."

This was the third time that my father had allowed me to cross the Channel alone. I considered myself to be quite a grown-up young lady. "I am seventeen," I told her.

"You hardly look sixteen."

I scarcely know what made me tell her, as I did before we parted, "I wish you would come to Madame Beck's" -- though Madame was wanting an English governess two months ago. I told myself I did not like her: she was altogether caustic and inconsiderate when I was ill with seasickness.

***

I saw her next at Madame Beck's: she was nursery governess to Madame's children. She would carry the youngest of them about in her arms -- a mere _bonne d'enfants_ , in fact. But a gentlewoman, and an Englishwoman -- my father would have approved that I make a friend of her.

I detest the Labassecourian diet, especially that served in a pensionnat like Madame Beck's: the thin salty soup, the dry tough bread, the salt fish and eggs on Fridays -- and above all the weak school coffee, a thin brown brew. _Pistolets_ I like, the soft buttery rolls peculiar to Labassecour, but I prefer tea in the morning, or if I must drink coffee, let it be strong and black. Lucy -- my _ange farouche_ \-- would give me her _pistolets_ , and drink my coffee, but it was not long before she ceased to turn a sympathetic ear to my protests about the foreign cooking.

Then for a while we would sit together in the evenings and sew -- Lucy had a neat fine hand with a needle -- but after a few weeks that proof of friendship too faded, and she gave me to understand that I must sew alone and she would study -- little bluestocking that she was! She valued book-learning, and languages, and all such nonsense -- but then, I supposed no gentleman would ever find her attractive, so she must work for a living, since she could not hope to marry well.

She had fine brown hair, and grey eyes, and a solemn, oval face -- her teeth were bad, she liked sweets too well, and her figure was not good -- too thin, too bony. When we were not together, I would fix upon her faults: when she was with me, I would cease to notice them. She never went out of an evening, and after she became the English teacher of the school, and soon entrusted with the supervision of the first classe, and a Labassecourian girl became Madame's _bonne d'enfants_ , she would sit in the classe _apliqique_ with her great books or her paper for drawing, quite indifferent -- it seemed -- even to me. It maddened me. I would pounce upon her as she crossed the carré and whirl her round into an impromptu dance -- she would protest, in her cross way, but she never resisted me. I would thus hold her briefly in my arms, as if she were a lady and I a gentleman, for all to see.

Long before the vaudeville, I had grown far from indifferent to Lucy Snowe.

***

It was a _vaudeville de pensionnat_ \-- I had taken a role in a dozen such. A play that is performed to school-girls and their parents, to schoolmistresses, to a handful of privileged interlopers. I have told you of Isidore, my bourgeois admirer. Well, he was one such interloper, by the fondness of Madame Beck, who -- bourgeois herself -- admired him without reservation.

I was to play the heroine, of course: a beautiful young girl choosing between two admirers. One was rather like Isidore -- at least, I knew he would see the resemblance: the other -- ah, the other! He was to be played in the vaudeville by Louise Van -- _chose_. I cannot remember. It is not important. She was a pretty girl, I suppose, -- dull, as these foreign girls are, and with nothing to distinguish her from the rest of them.

She had fallen ill, it seemed, for on the evening we were to have the play, she was not in the greenroom: of a sudden, Monsieur Paul appeared in the room. tugging Lucy Snowe with him, and declared that Miss Snowe would play the role that had been meant for Louise.

I had not seen Lucy all day -- I had looked for her, to admire her and to be admired by her, for this was a holiday, Madame Beck's birthday, and she would be in _fete_ dress. I was anxious to see how she would appear, and, to tell you the truth, my dear, more anxious to see whether she would consent to admire me.

I was thinking of her as I dressed for the role: she would be in the audience, at least, however she had evaded me so far. And -- as if I had conjured her by thought, and a genie out of the Arabian Nights had dragged her before me, here she was: to play my lover, to seek to woo me, to please me, to make me adore her. I was astonished. More than astonished: I could have laughed aloud. I wished the play would begin. I wished it were over, and _well_ over, so that I could dance with her . I wish you may never feel what I felt then, my dear: it was a wild moment for me.

There was a schoolmistress whom I detested, a Frenchwoman, who read bad novels in yellow covers and was ridiculously devoted to this same Monsieur Paul, who, by the way, was Madame Beck's cousin, a sometime teacher at the school, and a man with a reserve so great he might have been a priest. The Frenchwoman was _surveillante_ over us in the green room, and made a great bustle over producing Louise's brother's clothing, and insisting that she would dress "Mees Snowe" herself -- calling her _petit maitre_ in a sneering, snaky way. I have said I did not like her, and I would have offered to dress Lucy -- it would have been charming fun! -- but my Timon said, quietly but in tones that I knew meant she would brook no disagreement, "I will not change my dress."

Monsieur Paul seemed to recognise at once, as I had, that Lucy had her stubborn moments, and was not then to be argued with: he did not attempt to bully her, as Madame Snake did.

"It must be arranged in my own way," Lucy told him -- told all of us: "nobody must meddle. Just let me dress myself."

When she came out of the dressing-room, which she had entered alone, she wore her own dress still -- she did not wear a white dress suited to her age but not her complexion, but a crape-like material of purple-grey. It looked well on her, though it was dull: it did not outshine her skin, as white alone would have. With the vest, the collar and cravat, and a paletot, she looked a capital young man from the waist up. She had loosened her hair out of the braids of the coiffeur, so that she could rebraid her long back hair close to her skull, and she had brushed her front hair to one side.

I still vividly remember the excitement of the play. Lucy was awkward at first, shy, but I made her catch fire. I knew Isidore watched, seeing himself in the role played by the girl who was "Ours" -- I cannot even remember her name. That in itself would have leant excitement to my role, but being the lover of M. Lucien was like wine -- strong sweet wine. It went to my head: I was giddy with it.

It lasted not even an hour. The play ended: M. Lucien on her knees to me, my hand between hers, pressed against her heart, the accepted, acknowledged lover of my heroine. "Ours", the girl who played Isidore, stood ignored to one side. Our audience applauded, and I saw the sound seem to wake Lucy Snowe from within M. Lucien. This is hard to say, and you may think I am telling a fairy story, but it is not so: M. Lucien was gay and confident, sure of her ability to please. She smiled readily, spoke well, complimented me with wit and elegance, teased "Ours" and made him look small and uncertain. It was not all the lines written for her: Louise Vanderchalken, or whatever her name was, had all the lines memorised, but could not have won my heart.

Lucy Snowe appeared out of M. Lucien's face like a ghost, settling over the smiling face, becoming cold and ironical, not dashing and gay. The curtain fell -- it was an amateur affair -- and Lucy stood up, dusting off her skirt.

***

I found Lucy at the dance that evening, sitting alone in a quiet corner, and flung myself at her -- she did not resist as I wrapped my arms around her neck and breathed her name into ear, but she did not respond as I had hoped.

"What in the world is the matter?" she asked.

"How do I look -- " I almost asked her, "How do I look to you?" but I stopped myself. "How do I look tonight?"

She almost smiled. "As usual -- preposterously vain."

I could have cried. But it seemed impossible to me that she could resist me long. "Caustic creature! You never have a kind word for me," I told her: but I knew my power. "Come let us view ourselves in the great mirror in the dressing-room," I said: for this would let us be alone together, and M. Lucien might remember herself and reappear.

"I will, Miss Fanshawe," Lucy said, and grinned at me, swiftly, as if privately amused: I wondered if she had guessed my thought. "You shall be humoured even to the top of your bent."

I put my arm through hers, and drew her to the mirror. It had been moved there for our vaudeville from Madame Beck's own chambers, and it was broad and high enough to reflect us both together. I turned her and myself around: I smiled into her eyes: I let her see the trimness of my waist and the flow of my hair -- you have my hair when I was your age, child, flowing curls that look exquisite as a flower -- and all the while she looked at me, passive and cold, not even smiling.

I taunted her then -- I teased her, boasting to her of my lovers, of red-whiskered Isidore and my dearest Alfred, who was then just another of my suitors, who both were busy dying for me in the ballroom. I told her she had no attractive accomplishments, no beauty, that she did not know what admirers were. And she listened, without a word, without a smile, her face as judgemental and cool as if she ruled here, not I.

"I believe you never were in love, and never will be. You don't know the feeling."

Even to that, she said nothing, and her face did not change.

"And so much the better," I said at last. "For though you might have your own heart broken, no living heart will you ever break. Isn't it all true?"

I wanted her to deny it: to say she knew she was breaking my heart -- for, do you know, my dear, I really believe she was: I cannot recollect ever feeling such giddy heights or such horrid depths again. No, not even when I married your grandfather, and he comes into my next tale.

Her lips parted, and she said, with great coolness, "A good deal of it is true as gospel, and shrewd besides. There must be good in you, Ginevra, to speak so honestly; that snake -- " for she too saw the Frenchwoman I have mentioned as a sort of serpent " -- could not utter what you have uttered. Still, Miss Fanshawe, hapless as I am, according to your showing, sixpence I would not give to purchase you, body and soul." She smiled, and I felt myself breaking: for it was not Lucien's grin, gay and hard and bright, but Lucy's: slow and caustic and almost cruel.

I never saw M. Lucien again. I never felt so much for any woman -- indeed, though I would not say this if your grandfather were still alive, I never felt so much for any one.

***

What happened to Lucy Snowe? Oh, there is no story there. She made herself a small academic success at the end of her first year in Villette -- the examinations of Madame Beck's pupils were public, as is customary in Labassecour, and she did herself credit as their English teacher and examiner. She saved money and in time began her own school, with half a dozen bourgeois pupils. She prospered, and before Madame Beck had retired, "Mees Snowe" was the mistress of a school that rivalled hers. She remained my most faithful correspondant -- faithful, sarcastic, cynical, abrasive -- to the end of her days. I have her letters here, in this sandalwood box -- I have kept each one, and I suppose it will be as well for them to be burned after my death, since she was always free with her comments.

Ring, child, for the servants to bring our supper. And fetch my scarf: this room is too cold, it makes my eyes water. There is no more to tell of Lucy Snowe.

 

 

 


End file.
